


What Dreams Are Made Of

by WinterWidow94



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-13 07:39:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3373268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinterWidow94/pseuds/WinterWidow94
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>//A different account of what happens after the mid-season hiatus of season three. Rumple was brought back to life with the power of the dagger by Neil, who traded his life for his father’s. Pan has been dead for two weeks. All has been quiet since Rumple’s resurrection.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

Rumplestiltskin did not dream. He never had, not since he took up the knife of the Dark One. Dreams evaded him, for good or for ill.   
Did this black, twisting form count as a dream? It slithered its way into his mind, winding itself around the foundations of his mind and squeezing the breath from his lungs. As he suffocated, unable to wrestle free of this unconscious state, a voice whispered through the empty patterns and shadowed images he could not make out.   
One for the boy, asleep in his bed,  
One for the girl, with dreams in her head.  
One for the woman, who wishes for more,  
One for the man, who awakens no more.  
His eyes opened and he took a deep, deep breath of the darkness around him. He stared, unblinking, at the ceiling. “It’s not possible,” he whispered, even as the inky chill in his bones began to fade, protesting his denial.   
The Sandman had come.

Disorientation was not something he was used to feeling. He was used to floating, yes; with no ground beneath his feet and eternity at his fingertips, but this was different. This was dark, and cold. This was drowning in nothing, a single spark left alone in a bed of ash, squeezed by the air around it, yet never going out. Why? Why couldn’t he go out? Why wouldn’t it let him?  
What was it, anyway?  
Those were the only two questions left to wonder, the only thoughts left swirling in the emptiness of his mind. He could not move, and yet he never felt still. He could not speak, but his voice seemed so loud…echoes and echoes.  
What is your darkest secret?  
Echoes.  
A chasm. He was suspended in a chasm, between living and dying. Death would have been better than this. This nothing.  
What is your darkest secret?  
The black faded to a dark gray sometimes, like fog so thick it obscured everything else. Then it would fade, back to black. There was no color in this world. No life. No death. No walking, no running, no flying.   
Existing. Just that, only that.  
Misery without tears. Empty, hard rage; scrabbling, reaching, clawing at the void, unable to get a hold on anything at all.   
And that voice, always asking, always wanting to know.   
What is your darkest secret?  
He could not even remember his name. How was he supposed to remember his darkest secret? And yet, without memory or thought, there was a familiarity to the voice, to the question. Not the warm familiarity of friendship, but a faint kind of dread, like the sound of an enemy approaching from an unknown direction.  
What is your darkest secret?

“The Sandman?” Regina scoffed. “Really, Gold, I have better things to waste my time on than this.”  
“Better things than the arrival of someone even you, with all your power, could never defeat? You must have some very interesting things filling up your schedule.”  
“I think we should definitely hear this out,” said Emma, still sitting near the wall. Henry was in the seat next to her, and Mary-Margaret and Charming were on the other side of him, their arms twined comfortably around one another’s. “It’s just…the Sandman? Isn’t that a little childish?”  
“Oh,” said Gold, without bothering to disguise the sarcasm in his voice, “forgive me. I suppose you mean it’s impossible for a simple children’s tale to hold a grain of truth.”  
The look Henry gave his birth mother did not go unnoticed by anyone.   
Emma leaned back against the wall and folded her arms. “You have a point.”  
“What is this ‘Sandman’?” Charming leaned forward without letting go of Mary-Margaret.   
“He puts you to sleep, right?” Henry guessed. “That’s what I always heard.”  
“Sometimes, yes.” Gold hesitated, but only for a moment. “Sometimes, he never releases you from the sleep he gives you.”  
“So he’s like a serial killer?” Henry leaned forward, unconsciously imitating his maternal grandfather. “How does he do it?”  
“The Sandman controls the dream world. That is his realm, and there he is the king. Once he knows your name, he can invade your dreams and steal you away. If not in body, then in everything else that matters. Your mind, your heart, your spirit – he will steal them from beneath your closed eyes.”  
“How can you stop a guy like that?” Emma unfolded her arms, glancing from Gold to Regina and back again. “Or girl, or whatever ‘it’ is?”  
This time, Gold’s hesitation was longer, stretching into five seconds, then ten. “I don’t know.”  
Regina threw up her hands. “That’s it? Really, Gold. You march in here with a poem you heard in your dreams saying we’re all doomed, and the most help you can give us is an ‘I don’t know’?”  
He gave her a dry smile. “Perhaps if you had paid attention when I taught you everything you know-“  
“What was the poem?” Henry interrupted. Whether it was his hatred of adults fighting or simple curiosity did not matter; the question was a valid one. “Did he make it up?”  
“No.” Gold turned to face the boy. “When I was younger than you, it was a saying parents would tell their children before they went to bed.”  
Henry blinked, and Emma said, “Did they wanna give the poor kids nightmares?”  
“That,” said Gold with strained patience, “was not the full poem. The rest of it goes, ‘Don’t get out of bed, don’t open the door; don’t follow the light to the silver dream-shore. If you disobey, if you follow the light, your light will go dim, snuffed out by the night. The Sandman will come, he will take you away; sweep you into his arms, and in dreaming, you’ll stay.’”  
“That’s…macabre,” said Emma carefully.  
“Rather,” said Gold.  
For the first time, Mary-Margaret spoke. “Shouldn’t we stop wondering whether the Sandman is real, and try to find a way to stop him?”  
“An excellent idea.” Gold gave her a wry, sideways glance, then turned back to Regina. “I have only had one experience with the Sandman before last night, and it was not a pleasant one.”  
“Oh?” One eyebrow arched. Her gaze was sharp, expectant. “What was it?”  
Rumple lifted his chin and met her gaze with one just as sharp, twice as acidic. “He took my mother’s life.”

He remembered that time only in vague snatches. Pictures, one after another, like a vintage movie reel, just with more color. He had only been four years old, and his memory was as clumsy then as everything else belonging to a toddler.   
His mother, Aspen, lying on a bed, her skin pale against the red blanket. Her eyes roaming ceaselessly beneath closed eyelids, as thin and fragile as butterfly wings.   
Sitting in Malcolm’s lap, listening to a story. Though he could not remember the words, he knew it was a story of a boy who never grew up.  
He could understand that now, a little. It was the grudging realization that, for Malcolm, there had been no other way of coping. He had never been a mature man, and when his wife had died, he had simply returned to what he knew. What he had always been – a child.   
And a child, as Gold knew from bitter experience, could not have a child.  
Aspen had been taken in the middle of the night. He remembered watching her lips part to release that final breath, and he remembered Malcolm, kissing her forehead, holding her cold hands, tears dripping from his face. He remembered being forgotten, shoved in corners , forgotten in grief. He remembered not knowing what to do with himself. He remembered the first day, weeks later, when Malcolm seemed to remember him. When he took him out of the house, Rumple’s hand engulfed in Malcolm’s large one, and pointed out the sights, creating fantasy from nothing, spinning tales as deftly as if his mind were a wheel, his words the thread.  
And then, his memory had sound.  
“What happened to Mama?”  
“She was taken away from us.”  
“But who took her?”  
Gray clouds mounting above the trees. The smell of rain descending.  
“There are other worlds, laddie. Not just this one. One of them is the world of dreams and, like every world, it has a king.”  
“Did he take Mama?”  
“He did.”  
“Can we get her back?”  
“No. She’s dead.”  
“How do we know? Can’t we go look for her?”  
“No.”  
“But why-“  
“Because he killed her, Rumple! She was weak, and the Sandman - he found her. And he took her, and he killed her. There was nothing I could do.”  
Fear swelling in his throat. The first raindrop landing on his wrist.  
“Will he take me?”  
The startled look Malcolm gave him. The reassuring hand on his head.  
“No. He won’t.”  
“How do you know?”  
“Because he can only take you if you let him. He invites you, and if you say no, there’s nothing he can do about it.”  
“Really?”  
“Really.”  
“Mama went with him?”  
“She was tired, laddie. Tired like we all get. Well – except you. You’re too young, probably. I envy that sometimes.”  
“Papa?”  
“What is it?”  
Thunder growling in the clouds. Another raindrop, then another.  
“Are you sure the Sandman can’t take me?”  
“I’ll make sure of it.”  
“Do you promise?”  
“I promise, Rumple. I’ll never let him get you. And if you ever see him, you tell him to go back from where he came from.”   
Pouring rain.  
“He’s already taken enough from me. He’ll not take you, too.”


	2. Chapter Two

The council meeting – if you could properly call that motley crew a council – ended with vague fear and a feeling of helplessness. They did not know enough about the Sandman, and Regina was still skeptical about his having visited Gold at all. Emma was willing to believe him as long as Henry did, but even Henry’s knowledge was limited when it came to this archaic force. In fact, there was only one person whom Rumple had ever known who knew enough about the Sandman to speak of him, and he had stabbed that person in the back weeks before.  
He had died to kill that person, and he was back only by the grace of his son.   
Bringing back Pan should have been impossible. As far as everyone else knew, it was. But Gold hoarded contingencies like dragons hoarded treasure, and inside his shop, sat his newest acquisition.   
It was not the genie lamp itself. It had been sitting in his shop as long as he could remember, gathering dust. Waiting for the right time to be used.  
Two weeks ago, it had been.  
Before he had arrived to slay himself and Pan, he had used the genie lamp and his own magic to create a spell that would ensnare any magical spirit-creature and force it into the lamp. After all, the lamp was only waiting for someone else to be stuffed back in. This time, it would be a prison, and no amount of rubbing or wishing could release the prisoner from their suffering until Gold allowed it.  
He had never planned on releasing its prisoner, but plans had a way of changing.   
This time, he would be prepared.  
He told himself this, turning it over in his mind, tricking himself into determination, into courage he could not find. He was never prepared for his father.  
He was never prepared for Pan.  
But now he had Pan’s shadow trapped inside the genie lamp, and as long as he could control the shadow, he could control Pan. Bringing him back to life should be a simple matter, as long as it did not involve any willing sacrifice. No one would willingly sacrifice their life to bring back the one entity that terrified even the vilest, no matter what face he wore.  
“If I can control your shadow, I can control you.” The words were heard by no one but Gold, his eyes on the genie lamp where it sat, inconspicuous, next to the jar of teeth, beads, and chocolates.   
He closed his eyes.   
Breathed deeply.  
He would do this without anyone’s consent, without their permission.  
It was the only way.

 

Someone was invading his darkness. He could feel it, ripping at him, peeling him away from himself. He did not want to stay here, listening to the endless question, but he did not want to go. No. No, he didn’t want to go.  
What is your darkest secret?  
I don’t want to go.  
What is your darkest secret?  
No.  
No.  
“No!” The surreal sound of his own voice shattered his ears as light blinded him and the very air rubbed against his skin like sandpaper, like palm bark.  
The haunting voice with the demanding question was gone.  
Instead he heard a new voice. One he recognized, with less dread, more anticipation.  
“Hello, Papa.”  
And then the pain returned, scratching at his back, punching through him and grasping him to it. He reached up, feeling for the thing biting away at him, but his hands met nothing. Something was gone.  
“Oh, you won’t find it.”  
Pan risked opening his eyes. The light was still bright, but he had always adjusted quickly to change. It was one of the things that made him the dangerous adversary he knew he was. Any playing field, any game, became his as soon as he made a move. He tried to speak, but the only sound that escaped was a wounded growl.  
“Take your time,” said Gold, watching him with thinly veiled curiosity but genuine distaste. “This is the first time without your shadow in, what? A few hundred years?”  
Pan forced words through the growl that seemed to be waiting in his throat for every time he opened his mouth. “Where is it?” he spat, pushing himself to his feet, balancing on his fingertips before rising the rest of the way. “What have you done with it?”  
“I’m keeping it safe,” Gold replied evenly.   
“Give it back, laddie.” There was a dangerous edge to Pan’s tone, and Gold swallowed the urge to feel intimidated. Nothing about this should have intimidated him in any way, at least to outsiders. A teenaged boy, neither particularly tall nor particularly strong, in obvious pain, could pose no threat to someone like Gold.  
“I have no intention of ever doing so. At least, not until you’ve done something for me.” Gold leaned on his cane, immovable.   
Pan’s face was frightening even in his weakened state, his hands balled into fists, but he was listening. After all, thought Gold, his shadow is more important to him than family.  
Just like your dagger is to you, his mind hissed in rebuff.  
Was to me, he countered. I think I proved that otherwise.  
And now you have no son, and you may as well be fatherless. What do you have?  
“I’m impressed.” Pan’s voice interrupted his train of thought before Gold could come up with a proper reply. “Look at you, all grown up and bold. You never have much of a problem strutting around when you think you have the upper hand.”   
“Except this time, I do have the upper hand.” Gold’s smile did not reach his eyes. It was for theatrical purposes only.  
“Do you?” Pan’s eyebrow rose. He relaxed his hands, threw back his shoulders. The defiance in his eyes smoldered green. “You think just because you have my shadow in a box that I don’t have magic? We’ve been here before, Rumple. It didn’t end well for you.  
“It didn’t end well for either of us,” Gold conceded. “That’s why this time, I propose a deal.”  
“A deal.” Pan’s grin was fleeting, incredulous. “With you? Your age has gone to your head.”  
“An ironic statement, considering who I’m talking to.”  
Pan shrugged one shoulder.   
“Do you accept my proposal?”  
“I don’t even know what your proposal is, but I don’t think so.” Pan smirked, but Gold could tell that his smirk, too, was theatrical. His eyes were enraged. “How about this - you give me back my shadow, and I let you live.”  
“And leave you to destroy Storybrooke?” Gold shook his head with a dry laugh. “No.”  
“I’d leave.” Pan lifted both of his hands, as if in surrender. “You’d never have to see me again, laddie.”  
Gold was shocked. Not by the proposal – he had expected Pan to haggle and bargain, attempting to tilt things in his favor.   
No, he was shocked by his own weakness. Part of him wanted to accept. To let Pan leave, to hope against his own judgment that he would keep his word and stay gone.  
When he spoke, Gold’s voice was very soft. “No deal.”  
Pan’s reaction came almost before the last syllable fell from Gold’s mouth. He reached out with his left hand, and Gold felt an invisible hand grasp his throat, threatening to crush his trachea. Pan lifted his right hand and waved, an almost imperceptible flick of his wrist.   
A bronze bust that had been sitting on a shelf flew across the room and struck Gold’s skull. As the bust fell to the ground, so did Gold, his cane clattering to the floor.  
Pan flexed his fingers. “I expected more, laddie.”  
Holding his head, Gold looked up, peering through the pain at the boy looking down at him. “Why don’t you leave?” His voice was thunder in his ears, but he had been expecting a violent outburst from Pan. This was his last option, although he would keep his cards close to his vest. Pan would never know that this was his last idea, and he was desperately hoping it worked.  
“Something tells me you’ve got cards up your sleeve.” Pan sneered and pointed toward the front of the shop. “If I walk out that door, I’ll what? Go up in flames? Turn into a worm, like you?”  
Gold gripped his cane and climbed back to his feet. He could feel his head bleeding, but he disregarded it. “Why don’t you try it? Walk out. Fly away. Oh – if you can.”  
Pan had been turning to walk away, but now he froze, his back to Gold. He turned slowly on his heel, his jaw working back and forth like he was grinding his teeth to dust. “What have you done?”  
“Why don’t you see?” Gold waved a hand toward the door. “Be my guest.”  
Pan swallowed. It would not have been noticeable if Gold had not been specifically looking for signs of weakness in the boy who was his father, but he saw it.  
Good.  
Pan shifted his shoulders back, his gaze tilting up. His hands flexed at his sides.  
And then he looked at Gold with an expression more venomous than a viper’s. It became a smile, more frightening than any glare. “So,” he said finally. “This is all you have? You think you can lock my shadow away and take away my ability to fly, and I’ll…what? Be your dad again? That’s a bit ludicrous, isn’t it?”  
“The town needs your help,” said Gold. I need your help. “You are nothing more than a resort.”  
“The last one, I imagine.” Pan folded his arms. “What’s to stop me from killing you and finding my shadow myself?”  
“Because I’m the only one who knows where it is,” replied Gold evenly. “And as for your ability to fly, well; I’ve got that locked away somewhere else.”  
“I’ll find it.”  
“Oh, you will,” Gold agreed. “But not until I let you.”  
Pan laughed. It would have been a boyish sound if not for the malicious incredulity in his eyes. “So you need my help and couldn’t bring yourself to say ‘please,’ is that it? All right. I’ll play along, just until I decide if I’m interested.”  
Gold knew he had the upper hand. He also knew that upper hands tended to become lower hands around Pan, and he was going to have to plan each move carefully. Very carefully, if he wanted to survive it.


	3. Chapter Three

One Hour Before

“What if he doesn’t take the bait?” Belle’s eyes searched his face, one of her hands resting on his as if to channel reassurance both ways.   
“He will.”  
“But what if he doesn’t?”  
He snorted faintly. “The optimist is finally having her doubts?”  
“I’m optimistic, yes. Not stupid. Pan is the only person I’ve ever known you to fear, and the last time I saw him, he cost me you.”  
“But I’m back.”  
“You could have been gone forever. You’re only back because your son sacrificed his life to save you.”   
“Belle…”  
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t do this. I’m just…this is a whole family of people who have no idea how to love each other, who use one another like objects and…maybe you should try asking him for his help.”  
Gold laughed without mirth. “Belle, my fath – Pan would rather set himself on fire than help me, of that I’m quite sure.”  
“I’m not.”  
He touched her chin. “That’s one of the reasons I love you. But that’s your opinion, not mine. The only way to get him to cooperate is to take something he loves and hold it hostage.”  
Belle shook her head. “You’re never going to learn, are you?”  
“Learn what? Not everyone plays as nicely as you do.”  
“Maybe sometimes people are only your enemies because you don’t try to be their friend.”  
“Pan,” said Gold, his tone leaving no room for disagreement, “is not my friend. He should have been my father, and he gave me up.”   
“And you gave up Neal!” Her rose, her hands clenching into frustrated fists. “But you two fixed your relationship, or started to. Who’s to say you couldn’t do the same thing with Pan?”  
“I’ll say no more.” Gold rose, stepping away from her. She hugged one of the couch pillows to her stomach and watched him with those large, worried eyes that were so hard for him to ignore. “I won’t let him hurt you.”  
“I’m not worried about myself,” she retorted, and he knew it was true. She never worried about herself, even when it was foolish not to. “You can’t keep Pan on a leash forever. Even I know that.”  
“It’s not forever,” said Gold quickly, turning back around to face her. “He’s going to tell me about the Sandman. If we need him to get rid of it, we’ll use him. And then…” he hesitated.  
Belle straightened. “And then what?”  
“I’ll kill him for good, this time.”  
She pressed her lips together, her eyes hardening with stubbornness. “Oh, no, you’re not.”  
“I’m afraid I’ll have to.”  
She stood, tossing the pillow aside. “No! No, you don’t have to! If you’re holding his shadow and his flying magic, then there’s another way to do this. How many people in your family have to die before you run out of them entirely?”  
Gold tried to interrupt, but she thwarted him.   
“If Pan helps us defeat this Sandman guy, or whatever, then you’re letting him live. Keep his shadow and his flight if you have to, but I won’t let you kill him. If you do, I’ll…I’ll leave.”  
“Belle!”  
“I mean it, Rumple!”  
And he knew that she did. Which meant, he realized, that he was going to have to agree – for now. Until he could come up with another way to rid himself of Pan once the job was done.  
“All right,” he agreed at last, his voice quiet and resigned. “All right.”  
“Promise me.”  
“I promise.”  
She stepped closer until her head was tilted back, searching his face. “All right, then. Be careful. Please.”  
“You know I will.” He pressed a kiss against her forehead. As he turned and walked out the front door, dread and confusion mingled with apprehension, even hesitance.  
This was a promise he would not be able to keep, but he knew a thing or two about bridges.  
He would burn this one when he came to it. 

When Belle opened the front door, her first emotion was pure astonishment. Not because Gold and Pan were there, occupying the same small space, but because they were both alive and looked relatively unharmed. Also, she had been expecting Malcolm, not exactly Pan, and seeing the old-but-youthful figure was unexpected.   
“May we come in?” asked Gold, equally polite and sarcastic.  
Belle quickly opened the door the rest of the way. “Yes, of course – your head! What happened to it?”  
“Old reflexes,” said Pan. “Right, laddie?”  
Gold forced Pan into the house ahead of him, unwilling to lose sight of him. Pan scowled, but his scowl was replaced by a vague curiosity as he looked at the house around him.  
“Cozy,” he remarked.  
Belle motioned toward Gold and pointed at the couch. “Sit down. I’ll take care of that nasty cut.”  
“It’s nothing,” said Gold, casting an evil glance at Pan. “Just a little blunt-force trauma.”  
Pan snorted, then turned to face Belle as she opened what appeared to be a sewing basket and removed spools of thread alongside first aid items. “Just when did you move in?”  
“Last week,” said Belle.  
Pan’s eyebrow twitched. “Quick job of that, Rumple.”  
“We’re married.” Belle held up her left hand, displaying the ring encircling her wedding finger.  
This time, both of Pan’s eyebrows shot up. “And here I mistook you for a dalliance.”  
She turned her attention to Gold’s head. “I heard.”  
Pan smirked.  
Gold gave Belle a disgruntled wave. “You’re wincing more than I am. It’s barely a scratch.”  
“If you’re going to be stoic, then expect sympathy winces from me. There,” she said, putting the last strip across the cut, which had required three small ones. The fact that the first repercussion of Pan’s re-animation was a head injury for her husband, she was less than thrilled. Still, Pan was family, whether she liked it or not, and if there was anything she had learned in Storybrooke, it was the importance of family.  
Even rats like Pan.  
Gold saw the expressions crossing Belle’s face as she packed up the sewing and first aid items again. “Sit down.”   
Belle set the sewing basket back on the table and sat down to the left of Gold.   
“What is it?” Gold continued. His attention was on his wife, but his eyes were locked on Pan, even though the boy remained standing in the middle of the room, one hand resting cockily on his hip.  
“First of all,” said Belle, indicating a rush of questions to follow, “why is he a boy again? I saw him turn back into Malcolm when you – when he…died.”  
“No need to sugarcoat it, dearie,” said Gold affably. “I killed him.”  
Pan folded his arms. “And yourself, while you were at it.”  
Gold gave Pan a look of unveiled loathing. “I should have thought that would make you happy, Papa.”  
“Ahem.” Bell leaned forward. “Could you please answer my questions before you two try to kill each other?”  
“He’s under the impression I’m harmless,” said Pan, sliding his finger across the top of the mantle and giving his fingertip an unreadable expression.  
“I am never under that impression. I do, however, hold the key to the only two things you cherish, and at the moment I feel quite confident you will work to get them back.”  
Bell chewed on her lip before catching herself. “Malcolm? Hello? Anyone?”  
“He’s returned to the form of a teenager because I extracted his essence from his Shadow,” said Gold, making the explanation as precise and short as possible. “The Shadow was not his until he took his young body, so that was what came out.”  
“You make me sound like a perfume,” said Pan. He leaned against the side of one of the large living room chairs. “But I can’t say I’m not grateful.”  
“Age never did agree with you,” said Gold dryly.  
“Now that your girl’s hand her question…” Pan spun around and clasped both of his hands together and pointed his fingers at Gold like a gun. “What did you pull me out of the afterlife for?”  
“The afterlife?” Gold barked a one-syllable laugh. “Hardly. You were in the void, a place where souls who are still preserved in this life thanks to magic are destined to wait for a return. You should thank me. I hear it’s not a terribly enjoyable place.”  
“Oh, ha.” Pan’s smile was feral; a flash of teeth, then gone. “I still don’t feel sorry for you.”  
“Nor I you.”  
“Could we just…” Belle leaned her head back with a silent groan before straightening. “Could we attempt to deal with this like we have some sense of maturity? Rumple, you’re better than this.”  
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure, lassie.” Pan leaned comfortably against the wall. “I’m going to give my son until the count of five to explain exactly what I’m doing here before I kill you-” he directed this comment at Belle “-and spend the rest of my flightless life making yours miserable,” he concluded, this time talking to Gold.  
Gold moved as if to stand and fight, but Belle put a hand on his arm. “I’d like to know, too. Details.”  
Slowly and deliberately, as if talking to a small child, Gold forced himself to look at Pan and say, “Last night, I was visited by an old friend of yours.”  
Pan blinked once. “Friend? Which friend?”  
“The Sandman.”  
The sarcasm melted from Pan’s face, replaced by wariness. “You’re lying.”  
“I’m afraid not.”  
“If this is some trick-”  
“You can believe no trickery is involved, because I would not have pulled you from the void for anything from the best of reasons. Believe me.”


End file.
